Letter: Stop spending money on war

Friday

May 2, 2014 at 9:00 AM

The chicken hawks, mostly well-paid “soldiers of the sound bite,” again are squawking for war. As mouthpieces for those who seek war’s devastation and death as a viable foreign policy, they characterize dialogue and negotiation as capitulation or naiveté. The neocons’ recurring calls for belligerence and military mobilization, from Libya to Iran to Syria to Ukraine, are oblivious to the failures already experienced in two costly Middle East wars this century. Beyond lives sacrificed, money spent on war further neglects and ignores our own citizens’ needs at home.

These sunshine patriots, secure and out of harm’s way, call again for others to offer the ultimate sacrifice while they remain safe and uninvolved. Ever ready to send others’ sons and daughters to war, they too willingly risk our warriors’ lives to sustain the “corporate military-industrial complex,” the one President Eisenhower warned against as a dangerous threat to our political and economic security years after Ike personally witnessed the human cost that is war’s legacy. More dollars reallocated into war corporatists’ bloody hands enable the masters of war to profit from the world as a battleground, using others’ lives and money as collateral.

Support our troops; bring them home. Then, demand diligence before sending them to war elsewhere.